https://libertyprosperityblog.blogspot.com/2024/11/tom-homan-theres-finally-border-czar-in.html
Reporting on the Homan border czar appointment plus a video proving Ted Cruz is an asshole who berates a witness not allowing an actual answer so as to himself be a demagogue, stylistically. However, Cruz does via one visual item make a follow-up point, human traffickers and cartel safe passage charges for transhiping emigrants from south of the Mexican southern border into the US of A is an organized profit center for criminals. Warlords along the way exact passage charges in an organized way. Reuters reporting in 2021, of a situation Crabgrass had not seen reported then or later:
Color-coded passage: Why smugglers are tagging U.S.-bound migrants with wristbands
PENITAS, Texas (Reuters) - Along the banks of the Rio Grande in the scrubby grassland near Penitas, Texas, hundreds of colored plastic wristbands ripped off by migrants litter the ground, signs of what U.S. border officials say is a growing trend among powerful drug cartels and smugglers to track people paying to cross illegally into the United States.
The plastic bands - red, blue, green, white - some labeled "arrivals" or "entries" in Spanish, are discarded after migrants cross the river on makeshift rafts, according to a Reuters witness. Their use has not been widely reported before.
Some migrants are trying to evade border agents, others are mostly Central American families or young children traveling without parents who turn themselves into officials, often to seek asylum.
Border Patrol agents in the Rio Grande Valley sector, which spans more than 34,000 square miles (88,000 square kilometers)along the border in southeast Texas, have recently encountered immigrants wearing the bracelets during several apprehensions, said Matthew Dyman a spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
The "information on the bracelets represents a multitude of data that is used by smuggling organizations, such as payment status or affiliation with smuggling groups," Dyman told Reuters.
The differing smuggling techniques come as Democratic President Joe Biden's administration has sought to reverse restrictive immigration polices set up by his predecessor, former President Donald Trump. But a recent jump in border crossings has Republicans warning the easing of hardline policies will lead to an immigration crisis.
Just as bloviating Ted Cruz states w/o allowing a witness answer. Reuters continuing:
The categorization system illustrates the sophistication of organized criminal groups ferrying people across the U.S.-Mexico border, said Theresa Cardinal Brown, director of immigration and cross-border policy at the Washington-based Bipartisan Policy Center
"They run it like a business," said Cardinal Brown, which means "finding more patrons and looking for efficiencies." Migrants can pay thousands of dollars for the journey to the United States and human smugglers have to pay off drug cartels to move people through parts of Mexico.
"This is a money-making operation and they have to pay close attention to who has paid," she said. "This may be a new way to keep track."
Criminal groups operating in northern Mexico, however, have long used systems to log which migrants have already paid for the right to be in gang-controlled territory, as well as for the right to cross the border into the United States, migration experts said.
[...] When increased numbers of Central American were arriving at the border on express buses in 2019, smugglers kept tabs on them by double checking "the names and IDs of migrants before they got off the bus to make sure they had paid," Cardinal Brown said.
A migrant in Reynosa - one of the most dangerous cities in Mexico across the border from McAllen, Texas - [...] said he paid $500 to one of the criminal groups in the city after he arrived a few months ago from Honduras to secure the purple bracelet to protect against kidnapping or extortion. He said once migrants or their smugglers have paid for the right to cross the river, which is also controlled by criminal groups, they receive another bracelet.
"This way we're not in danger, neither us nor the 'coyote,'" he said, using the Spanish word for smuggler.
One human smuggler who spoke on conditions of anonymity, confirmed the bracelets were a system to designate who has paid for the right to transit through cartel territory.
[...] In January, a group of migrants were massacred in Tamaulipas state just 40 miles (70 km) west of Reynosa. Twelve local Mexican police have been arrested in connection with the massacre.
Reporting by Adrees Latif in Texas and Laura Gottesdiener in Monterrey, Mexico; Writing by Mica Rosenberg; Editing by Ross Colvin and Lisa Shumake
The item indicates there is a warlord system where money is required at differing places for migrants to move northward, with it appearing a system is in place which Mexican authorities allow. If Trump curbs this, via tariff threats or other measures, he would be doing something worthwhile. Mexico has to act responsibly to be credible as anything other than a permissive facilitator of criminal activity.
If Trump actually curbs this kind of thing, without strangling legal immigration, then the Congress can act on the bill Trump stymied pre-election, to set a sane border policy.
Cruz has his style irregularities which gall sensible people, but the actual situation of how Mexicans manage things needs general attention in our nation; and it has not been a strong point of Mainstream Media reporting. Not strong enough until this blog post was encountered. Three other returned items from searching the wristband usage:
One item reporting the story indicated that human smuggling was more profitable than getting drugs across the border. The payments are made outside of the U.S. also - it is reported as all within Mexico. End of story.
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UPDATE: The chips are on the table. If Trump can get Mexico to clean up its act, great, then give him credit. If he does token deportation of really bad actors, without cleaning up cartel people in our nation now, the real hard work, blame him. He has the White House.
Let's see what he does with it besides making his own wealth grow.
Let's see where and how JD fits in as VP. He has to do better than telling tales about eating cats and dogs, while Taylor Swift goes on making money singing songs for her fan base. This is time to show what you can do, JD
Ditto, DJT.